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End Birthright Citizenship
Oleysa Suhareva traveled from Russia to Miami to give birth.
Last week, Michael Anton (of “The Flight 93 Election” fame) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Citizenship Shouldn’t be a Birthright,” which has caused paroxysms of huffing outrage from all of the predictable quarters of the left. A worse messenger for a perfectly sensible message would be hard to locate, but it isn’t merely the identity of the author that has people up in arms.
Monday, even the otherwise calm and reasoned Robert Tracinski wrote quite a doozy at The Federalist. Titled “Ending birthright citizenship will make the Republican Party look like the party of Dred Scott,” Robert responds to Anton’s op-ed with several hyperbolic claims that give undue credence to the left’s continuous charge that anything a Republican ever does (including breathe) is racist:
Anton’s proposal will be overwhelmingly interpreted as a declaration to black Americans that the Republican Party—the party that drafted the Fourteenth Amendment in the first place—now does not see them as equal citizens.
Excuse me, but this argument is so poor that it must be considered the leader in the clubhouse for non sequitur of the year. Not for nothing, when did Democrats start countenancing Republican policy proposals as anything other than racism? Welfare reform? That’s racist. Voter ID? Also racist. Border enforcement? Totally racist. Prisons and law enforcement? Super-duper racist. Even tax reform was pilloried as racist because it would disproportionately benefit whites according to its critics.
It’s true that the Democrats’ penchant for shouting “racist!” isn’t enough to dispel the possibility that this policy proposal didn’t stem from some wellspring of latent pro-white sentiment, however. So, what precisely is anti-black about the prospect of denying foreigners the right to have their children receive citizenship just for being born on our dirt? Nothing that I can see.
It’s an argument that doesn’t doesn’t even make sense, and no answer as to why is in the offing. Clearly, all African Americans who are currently citizens (and their children, by extension) are citizens. Anton’s proposal wouldn’t affect that one whit.
So, what exactly is the contemplated change? To understand this, you have to understand the history of Birthright Citizenship, which goes back (as most people will recall from history class) to the 14th Amendment. It states:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The reasoning behind this is pretty straightforward. The 14th Amendment was necessary to annul the horrific Dred Scott decision, and was worded as it was to nullify the idea that black slaves and their children couldn’t even be citizens of the United States by dint of some spurious claims of “inferiority.” This, of course, was back when people had the will to do the hard work required to amend the Constitution if legislation or Court decisions went against them, rather than trying to enforce their will through judicial fiat — but that’s another story.
The trouble here arises from the term “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which under modern understanding includes people whose parents were neither born here or naturalized; i.e., people who are not citizens or legal residents of this nation. This understanding, however, is merely an extension of the Wong Kim Ark case in which the Court held that the children of legal immigrants were granted citizenship. Congress could clarify that definition with a simple statutory modification.
But this is all dancing around the central issue: Why should we do away with birthright citizenship? First and foremost because there’s no reason for us to give something away to foreigners for nothing which is so intrinsically valuable. Citizenship is literally for sale in many nations of the world for a variety of prices. American citizenship (it should come as no shock) is worth a boatload to its possessor. A person with birthright citizenship can essentially never be deported, and thanks to the various and sundry welfare laws in our country, the nation is statutorily obligated to care for him in the event of his incapacity. This is a massive windfall for merely having had the good fortune to have been birthed within the confines of our nation.
The current policy also leads to absurdities, such as Birth Tourism, whereby foreigners (like from the left’s favorite country, Russia!) travel to the United States for the sole purpose of having their baby so that it will gain US citizenship … and thereby have a bolthole in the event things go sideways in their home country. To wit:
Why do they come? “American passport is a big plus for the baby. Why not?” Olesia Reshetova, 31, told NBC News.
Indeed. Why are we so stupid as to give something away which is obviously worth so much?
Reciprocity is another reason why this policy needs to be modified. If you’re a pregnant Spanish tourist and deliver your child here in the US, citizenship is automatic. If you’re an American in Spain? Buena suerte, chica. There’s simply no reason for us to have such an expansive policy when other nations don’t.
I can hear some people saying, “but American citizenship is a windfall that you were an unjust recipient of!” That is completely accurate. But I would point such people to other things such as “inheritance” or “having caring, intelligent parents” that are similarly “unjust” but about which conservatives are rightly nonplussed by comparison. Citizenship is a thing that we will to our children merely by having them.
What was the Founders’ opinion about this windfall? Well, we could also look at the Preamble of the Constitution for some guidance:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [emphasis mine]
To whom were the blessings of liberty to be secured by the formation of this nation? Ourselves and our posterity … our children. Explicitly not the children of foreigners who sneaked into the nation. Worth noting is that the notions of “Justice” and “Domestic Tranquility” surely must include fair and even enforcement of the law and an expectation of peace which comes from knowing that the people who surround you are also citizens or legal immigrants to the nation.
How many other nations in the world have birthright citizenship? Many, mostly in the Western Hemisphere, but not all. Is there precedent for revoking birthright citizenship? Yes. In 1986, Australia imposed restrictions upon birthright citizenship, holding that at least one parent of a child must have legal, permanent residency in Australia in order to gain citizenship there. It’s possible the deliberations of the Australian Parliament in Canberra centered solely upon the need to deprive non-whites of Australian citizenship, but somehow I doubt it. India (curiously, another Anglosphere nation) abolished it utterly in 2004. Worth noting: neither of these countries were subducted by vengeful flames into the Earth’s molten core for daring to remove birthright citizenship either.
Given my druthers, citizenship and residency would work on a sliding scale, whereby people gain full citizenship in our nation via a demonstration of merit. That isn’t the world we live in, and I am utterly resigned to that fact. But I’m also not the sort of person who will allow a presumed image of perfection to be the enemy of the good. Therefore, down with birthright citizenship. It is both a travesty and a con played upon our children and the future of our nation.
Published in Immigration
Moderator Note:
Please watch the vulgarities and insults.I can’t be [redacted] to go back and find the [redacted] who asked, how could I say we should recognize the ethnic heritage of our founders, as all other nations do, and still say my position on birthright citizenship (Abolitionist, in case you didn’t get that) ) is not racist?
Two gents, at least, if I recall, implied that I would want to deport all citizens of Slav, Jewish, or black ancestry.
No, see, that wasn’t what this debate is about. And my two positions are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, we should be proud of our ancestral racial national heritage. That in no way implies we should expel anyone. It’s just, we should not be ashamed or embarrassed to recognize, and we should not shrink from reminding others, to whom we owe this great polity.
Stay! Enjoy! But remember . ( And oh yeah: don’t expect those of us who can claim ethnic kinship with our Founders to be ashamed of it!)
So that’s a separate issue from our attitudes and policies toward present-day border jumpers. No matter what race they are, Latino, Russian, Chinese–
enter “subject to” our jurisdiction, that is, in respect and subordination to our laws and in recognition of and subordination to our nation’s sovereignty
or not. And if “not”, then the tainted tree of your illegal entry can never bear the sweet fruit of citizenship.
Simple, really.
This is a nice sentiment, but flies in the face of reality; try being an illegal immigrant in a place like Mexico.
Citizenship provides people a variety of protections which are not available to non-citizens, including the right of presence. Non-citizens don’t have those rights and have to obtain permission to enter sovereign nations. That’s what I mean when I say that we have the right to be free from being pestered by foreigners.
I see nothing wrong with those notions.
Are you kidding? This cried out for the obvious response. Whyncha at least use your strike-through?
The opposing arguments mostly boil down to the idea that foreigners have the right to immigrate to the US. And That somehow out Constitution requires that. In fact there’s nothing in the Constitution which would prohibit Congress from passing a law prohibiting immigration on the basis of race or nationality. Nothing that even remotely comes close. The only impediment to that is political. In other words, just as you get to decide who you hang out with, and can use whatever criteria you want, so can the American people decide who they want to come here, for whatever reason they want. Their hands should not be tied by anything in that decision, including their Constitution, other than their own sense of right and wrong and who would make good citizens.
This could equally be said of the current policy.
The risk of unintended consequences pushes you towards recognizing that you might be wrong, not resisting any change whatsoever.
Being afraid of unintended consequences create its own unintended consequences.
I think Birthright citizenship helps the process of integration. As I have said previously integration is not just about the immigrants changing it is about the natives also accepting the immigrants. Look at the ethnostates of Europe. There are minority ethnic populations that will never be considered fully integrated into the larger populations of the countries they reside in and I think this is in no small part due to the immutability of blood. No amount of generation on Romanian soil will make a Hungarian less Hungarian. In America this is not the case in no small part thanks to birthright citizenship. In America you could never have third generation Turks whose parents/grandparents came over on work visas living in the country and not being citizens, because of the 14th amendment. It protects us from our own bad impulses in the same way that most of the Amendments do. It creates an easy and relatively unambiguous method for citizenship there by short circuiting the potential creation of a persistent noncitizen cast. Which of course was its intention in dealing with the ultimate case of flawed immigration policy in our history, slavery.
It is an interesting juxtaposition. Back then, you were for ripping up the oldest structure in human history. I don’t recall you expressing much concern over unintended consequences
But when people argue for changing immigration laws in one country, the risk of unintended consequences is such a powerful argument that we can’t change it.
I think the risk of unintended consequences was much greater for SSM than ending birth tourism, a concept that didn’t exist even 100 years ago.
Nor would you have any under Majestyk’s proposal because those parents/grandparents would be legal permanent residents (if they’re here long enough to have grandchildren) which would mean their children would be citizens.
The costs, however, could be immense in terms of a destruction of a shared national identity in favor of ghettoized identitarian groups with competing interests.
That’s already what America has become, largely because years of permissive immigration laws (including birthright citizenship for illegal aliens) has amounted to a de facto policy of importing hundreds of thousands of future Democrat (i.e. identitarian) voters every year. To my knowledge, the only sizable group of immigrants that has trended Republican are the Cubans and (to a lesser extent and until recently) the Filipinos.
No, I’m not saying that immigrants are the primary reason for the current state of American culture……but immigrants and their progeny, by overwhelmingly supporting Democrats, have empowered (and over the years, embraced) the far left identitarian and anti-American worldview of progressive Democrats. The majority of the Democrat vote isn’t comprised of (relatively) recent immigrants and their children, but they’ve provided the edge the Left needed to attain political power both locally and nationally in much the same way that Cuban refugees provided an edge for Republicans in Florida. After 40-50 years of this, its extremely unlikely that this trend is going to change, not in time to contain (much less reverse) the damage, anyway.
If its true that illegal immigrants account for 7% of births in the United States, then ending Birthright citizenship would essentially amount to at least 5% less Democrats in the generation subsequent to a repeal. In a closely divided country, that could be a difference-maker, and go a long way towards giving the melting pot time enough to mix (though we also have to break the progressive stranglehold on cultural institutions for that to happen).
No they don’t.
Well one would think that with current policy we could see and quantify the consequences.
And the restrictionist argument boils down to, we can be as arbitrary and capricious as we wish to be in this matter and so must be so to the extreme just to prove we can be. Ignoring all the sound principles of Conservative prudence to not up end years of common practice. Arguing that you have a right and power to do something is not sufficient to to conclude you should do something. I say our history and experience has shown birthright citizenship to work for us. I think the harm of it has not been concretely demonstrated or explained in any of the responses or OP. What has been shown is a lot of indignation that something no native born American has ever worked for can also be given to someone else so easily.
Reminds me of the parable from the bible about the man hiring workers to work his field, with the workers who started at dawn complaining that the workers who started int he afternoon also got the same pay.
I advocated that it be done slowly, incrementally, democratically and with as many safeguards for religious liberty in place as possible. I was one of the few that acknowledged it was an actual change in the institution and definition of marriage. And I acknowledged that there were foreseeable downsides and unintended consequences. Hence why I advocated it be done slowly, incrementally, democratically and with as many safeguards for religious liberty in place as possible.
I also argued that many of the consequences people said may occur had already occurred due to other changes in the institution.
But we’re not simply going after birther tourism, we’re going after a bedrock of what makes people American. Throwing a bomb into the hands of the identitarian left and saying: have at it.
You’re right that I have my own cognitive biases here, but bringing up old arguments doesn’t really address the current topic so this will be my last comment on SSM in this thread.
From what I see, the proposal is only going after birther tourism and people who are here illegally.
You can argue that once we crack open the 14th Amendment, we can’t control where it goes, but the proposals being proposed by Shawn are focused on birth tourism and illegal immigrants.
Actually, yes, we are.
I have tried not to personalize this issue, but I’ll make an exception here.
When my daughter started kindergarten we were invited to the school to meet the teachers and glad-hand them. The sign that greeted us in the hallway had an arrow pointing in one direction for parents who spoke English, and a second arrow for those who spoke Spanish. This, I found to be upsetting for a variety of reasons.
Why were people who couldn’t speak English putting their children into our school? How disruptive would that turn out to be? Was anybody asking about the immigration status of these non-English speakers? Would children who couldn’t speak English be in our daughter’s class? Moreover: Why didn’t ICE show up at that meeting with a bus? The absurdities pile up after awhile into a towering mass of ridiculousness.
There were no good answers to these questions, and I find the notion that we tolerate this sort of lawlessness and criticize people who notice and point it out as “racist,” “nativist” or any other derogatory name to be balderdash.
The harms are obvious. We have bifurcated schools, where (frequently) half of the school is populated by children who can’t speak English and have been dragged (irresponsibly) by their parents into a situation where they have no legal status and no right to be. Children who speak English as a second language tend to lag far behind their native English-speaking compatriots academically.
We are doing them no favors merely by allowing them to be here.
I also don’t buy that what makes us uniquely American is the geographic location of our birth. It’s a romantic notion that doesn’t comport with reality.
This will be a shorter list:
Which foreigners don’t have the right to immigrate to the US?
Since we are talking about our own experiences, I used to live in Kazakhstan, part of the former Soviet Union. Kazakhstan was Stalin’s dumping ground after WWII, so millions of captured Germans were forcibly resettled to Kazakhstan. After the wall fell and reunification, Germany had a policy of granting citizenship to ethnic Germans around the world (I don’t know the exact requirements).
My morning commute took me past the EU embassy. On certain days of the week, there was always a line of people wrapped around the block. These people were applying for German citizenship because welfare in Germany paid much better than a decent paying job in Kazakhstan (when I was there, the average salary was less then $150 a month). The locals I worked talked about how it was the life’s dream to get German citizenship and go live there on welfare. Since I’ve moved back to the US, we’ve become quite good friends with two families of German nationals. You mention this to them and you will be subject to an hour long diatribe about how these immigrants make more money doing nothing and live better than people that have worked their whole life.
When the 14th Amendment was passed, the rights of citizenship did not include life-long welfare. Now that it does, the cost of supporting someone forever on welfare is an unintended consequence of the overly broad language used in the 14th Amendment.
Almost everyone here would support granting citizenship to legal permanent residents, so ending birthright citizenship would not strip away citizenship from all immigrants, just the ones who currently have an incentive to find a loophole in the law.
And it’s a fair point to make that a great deal of the harm that accrues to Americans as a result of unfettered immigration is the asymmetric costs that the education, healthcare and various other social systems bear as a result.
An appropriate counterpoint to that is: Reform the welfare system. I’m in complete agreement with that. But when it comes to the biggest “welfare” system – the public schools – there’s probably no way around that. There is a vast asymmetry warping around schools, whereby an illegal immigrant who comes to this country and earns something like minimum wage (and pays commensurate levels of tax) gets to extract benefits from that system which are orders of magnitude larger than their tax burden with a single child… let alone more than one.
So, I’m in favor of an all of the above solution: shut off the spigot of immigrants and reform the welfare and school systems to de-magnetize them.
I can think of almost no examples of bilingual countries or societies that remain unified without the imposition of some external military force. Even Canada has had its issues with this.
The ethnic heritage of our founders? So English. Correct? Since at the time of our founding, each European nation was considered its own ethnicity. What percentage English are you? I need to determine how much I should recognize you.
Apparently though, we don’t have the right to be “pestered” by foreigners, since a large hunk of the population has no problem with it, but it order for you not to be pestered the rest of us must be restricted from interacting with these people.
Singapore
Well, with a welcoming statement like that, I don’t know why they aren’t tripping over themselves to become Republicans.
“In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.” — Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore (1959-90)
I actually think we could remain unified. But it will be hard. Already 1 in 5 Americans don’t speak English at home. Why would we want that to be the case? Why make things harder than they have to be, when keeping it easy doesn’t violate anyone’s rights?
What a silly thing to say. What an offensive thing to say.
This sounds an awful lot like you’re accusing me of racism, or ethno-nationalism, or some-such.
Your response bears almost no relation to what I said. When I talk about citizenship being passed down from parents to children, why do you sneak in an assumption about those parents having a particular ethnicity? Can you explain where that creeps in?
If birthright citizenship keeps us from having this German-style ethnic state you so cavalierly associate with what I’ve said, then surely automatic citizenship (for all ages) upon entry would be even more effective.
How dare you, sir, attempt to keep America white by denying citizenship to Canadian tourists, Chinese students, and Finnish visitors to Disneyland?
I’m not sure how this disproves the fact that Singapore is a multilingual society that has remained unified, but ok.
Majestyk is one of the reasons that I love Ricochet.
Still reading through the comments.
Awesome OP dude!